


Chamber of Dust

by AVirtoMusae



Series: Infinite and Infinity [3]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Earth was destroyed, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Loss, Cutting, Dark, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Compromised, LIKE SERIOUS ANGST, M/M, Nero destroyed Earth too, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Past Suicide Attempt, Politics, Poor Spock, Self-Harm, Slow? Burn, T'hy'la, Tarsus IV, The admiralty is annoying, did I mention the angst?, past genocide, scapegoating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-19 04:52:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5954284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVirtoMusae/pseuds/AVirtoMusae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nero destroyed Earth, and someone has to take the blame. Who better than the person who decided to go to the Laurentian System instead of go after Nero? Disgraced, dishonored, hated, and utterly lost, Spock gets help from an unexpected source -- the man who destroyed Nero and saved the rest of the Federation.</p><p>{Can be read as a stand-alone}</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Hunger" by Amaranthe. This is set in the fifth universe Spock visited in "Stardust Leads the Way" but can be read as a stand-alone.

Spock stared up at the ship he had been acting captain of in something almost like disbelief. It was not disbelief because disbelief required feeling. He had always heard that Vulcans did not feel and that he, therefore, should not either. He had always felt, but now he did not. Everything was gone. Spock knew this, but he could not feel this. Everything was empty and he could not feel.

There was no longer any place he could call home. 

How long had it even been?

Hours?

Minutes?

Days?

Spock’s sense of time failed him. 

He had seen two planets collapse in on themselves — one red with only small hints of blue where the small seas and oceans had been and one blue and green with white clouds floating in its atmosphere. Both had been so different, yet their fate had been the same.

Spock shut his eyes and felt the peculiar ( _illogical_ , his brain supplied) urge to lean his head against the smooth metal of his cabin’s walls. 

His life was falling apart. Both his planets were gone. Anywhere he had belonged was gone. There were now fewer living humans than Vulcans. Not many of either has survived. 

People Spock had spoken to just that morning were now gone forever. Most of Starfleet leadership had been destroyed because it had been so Earth-based. There were only a couple admirals left now. _So few, so many destroyed because of a single madman, so many destroyed because Spock had thought it better to obey orders than try to minimize damage._ Spock was unsure if Starfleet had a future. How could it when most of the highest-ranking officers were _captains_?

Spock let his eyes drift shut. He was responsible for this all. He knew that in his mind, but all his limbs were heavy, everything was too much, and he still could not feel the gut-wrenching guilt he knew he should be feeling.

It was strange. He had always felt too much and now he felt nothing but the heavy air around him suffocating him and keeping him from feeling.

“Spock.”

Spock was not expecting anyone to find him. He had not wanted anyone to find him either — if he talked to no one, there was more time before he had to process everything he happened and had to feel everything. He was sure the numbness was the only reason he had not completely fallen apart (and that was debatable when one considered the decisions he had made).

“Nyota,” Spock replied. He was detached from his conversation. He noticed, almost objectively, how flat and calm his voice was. He wondered if this, too, was a product of how empty he felt inside. 

“How are you holding up?” Nyota asked. Spock tilted his head to the side, the idiomatic nature of the expression escaping him for a moment. This, too, puzzled him: usually, he was only pretending not to comprehend colloquialisms. 

“I am holding nothing up.” His voice still had that even tone to it. Spock supposed this might be how he always sounded.

“Spock . . .” Nyota murmured, looking at him in concern. Spock found himself, against logic, wishing she would stop. He had found himself flinching away from her since everything had happened. He desired the pity and worry of no one. 

Spock looked at Nyota, his stare almost as defiant as when he had denied the Vulcan Science Academy. “I am _fine._ ”

Nyota, Spock realized, was unconvinced. She knew his dislike for the word “fine.” To is relief, Nyota did nod. He then realized the tears in her eyes. It only then occurred to Spock that she had lost her home and family as much as Spock himself had. Every human and every Vulcan alive had lost everything.

_His fault — all of it._

When he shut his eyes, it was not the collapse of two planets he saw but his mother falling. So much more destruction, but all he could see was that one microcosm. Yet, there were no feelings attached to these memories. After the horror and shock, his emotions were gone. Buried, if he admitted it to himself.

Indeed, what he felt the most was the inability to feel his grief. But it was more than that — a guilt for not feeling everything , the annihilation, as strongly and surely as he thought everyone else would. 

How could he not be feeling it when everything had been right there in front of him?

He should have felt, Vulcan as his heart was. And yet, nothing.

After Nyota left, his lip curled up in a very un-Vulcan display. A dry sob slipped through his lips from the sheer despair at not being able to feel everything he knew he should have been feeling.

He turned to sit on his bed and let his head rest on his hands. He did not know how long he was sitting there, but after a while, he walked over to the pseudo-kitchen, which contained a replicator and various cooking utensils. He stopped in front of the knives. 

Would he feel if he pressed a blade into his skin?

Would the beads of green that would form on his wrists bring the anguish he should have?

Spock took a breath.

Illogical.

That described these thoughts. He needed to meditate. He needed to get these thoughts out of his head before he acted on them. With great effort, he pushed them away and lit the incense for his meditation. 

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

He sat in his pose for meditation and took a breath and commenced.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

_Falling, falling, falling inward — orange, pale orange and swirling clouds sucked in as the rocks fell._

_Rage._

_Implacable, undeniable._

_Control it control it control it_

_His mother falling before the planet_

_Down down_

_Down_

_Down_

_White_

_Not there_

_Where was she? Where was she? Where was she?_

_Dead._

_Gone._

_Pain._

_Throbbing, broken bond, agony, so much agony_

_Planet gone, too._

_Whereiseveryone?_

_A name:_

_Nero_

_Gofterhimgoafterhimgoafterhimgoafterhimgoafterhim_

_NO_

_He couldn’t — orders_

_Control_

_CONTROL_

_Numbness don’tfeeldon’tfeel_

_Do not feel_

_Push everything back, put it away_

_Hide it_

_Hide from it_

_Nothing_

_No pain_

_No anything_

_Calm_

_Laurentian System_

_Earth gone_

_No home_

_Knowing something is wrong but feeling nothing_

_He is void. Where is he?_

_Why can he not feel?_

_Wall_

_There is a wall hiding him_

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Spock let out a slow, gasping breath — highly un-Vulcan of him. He took a moment to process that he had been more-or-less ejected from his own mind. The barrier there was strong, but there was a barrier. Spock knew in his head that he ought to care that it was there and want it down, but he could not quite feel a need to see the mind healer. 

Spock was functioning adequately.

That had to be enough.

He sucked in another short breath and stood, turning toward the entrance to his door. He could be a robot, denying that anything was wrong and that he was empty and not controlled. He breathed in and out, focusing on that one simple action.

In.

Out.

In.

Spock walked into the hallway, and as he had been doing for all his life, he ignored the scornful gazes cast his way. How different they were now. They were from humans and Vulcans both, but it was no longer prejudice. Now they were blame and hate, and Spock knew mentally he deserved it. Inside, he was still void, the feelings of hate radiating off everyone slipping past his wall but not penetrating him. Spock found he did not like not being able to feel it. That was strange, as when he was a child, he wanted to be able to ignore it all. How times changed. 

Spock checked the clock. His time sense had not improved from his meditation. He had a meeting with the admiralty in thirty minutes. Methodically (robotically, some part of his brain called it) he got dressed and freshened up and walked toward the office where he was meant to meet the admiralty. 

“Commander S’chn T’Gai Spock,” one of the admirals greeted him. She was Vulcan, and without a doubt, that was the reason she had been chosen to say his name. Objective observations — no fear, no intimidation from the furious, condemning looks on their faces. Spock stood stalk-still with his Vulcan posture more flawless than it ever was. “You are undoubtedly aware of why you are here.”

Spock was not sure because he barely was devoting thought to anything. He felt nothing, not even incentive to do anything. “I am not.”

The admiral sitting next to the Vulcan admiral sighed and ran a hand through his sparse hair. “Due to your actions, you are being court martialled. This is a formality. People in the Federation already see you as responsible for not saving Vulcan and Terra.” The admiral stared at Spock as if waiting for comprehension to dawn on him.

Comprehension did not dawn on Spock. He had been following orders.

_He had been following orders._

He could not be held to blame, could he? Spock looked at the admirals, all three of them. But there was no compassion in their eyes, no humor. It was then that Spock realized the admirals were being entirely serious. Spock felt a little concern. It was his first true feeling since everything had happened, and it contained very little of the depth to which Spock was accustomed. 

“What will happen to me?”

The Vulcan admiral cast a blank stare at him. “You are to be dishonorably discharged.” To Spock, that phrase sounded impossibly akin to “good riddance.” Spock knew that she disliked him and blamed him for the loss of Vulcan. Spock knew the other two admirals were human and blamed him for the loss of Earth. He knew that all odds were against him.

“Look, this isn’t normal procedure,” the third admiral informed him, “but you have to understand that if we don’t get you out of Starfleet, Starfleet’ll take some serious flak. We can’t have that, especially now. We need to appease the public — ousting you?” The admiral looked like he was prepared to continue, but he was cut off by the second admiral.

“Basically,” the admiral said, shooting a glare at the third admiral, “getting rid of you is our only option. The hearing’s a formality only.”

Spock stared at the admirals. Numb and unfeeling as he was, he knew that he had no idea what to do without Starfleet. His position was all he had: his only direction. It had been what had kept him going in those silent, frozen days following the end of Vulcan.

Spock could help build Terran and Vulcan colonies, but Spock had enough presence of mind to realize that he would not be readily welcomed by either species. Spock nodded. He would be fine. Fine in the “variable definitions” sort of way, but Spock would weather this. He would be all right, all right in that numbness. He would not be lost.

He had nothing, and no hope.

He was lost, and he had no way out of the metaphorical pit.

Spock shut his eyes and nodded mechanically. “Understood, sirs.” He knew there was nothing he could do to save his place, to fight about this loss, so Spock would not practice futility and fight. He needed to find something else to do, to see if anyone in the Federation wanted him.

“Dismissed, Commander,” the Vulcan admiral said, standing up. The other admirals followed her lead. Spock snapped a salute and left. 

Spock walked down the corridor and ignored the looks he was being given. Starbase 005 was not a good place for him to be right now by virtue of everyone’s hate. The Starbase was likely not at all safe for him either, but Spock did not find himself concerned for his own safety. Spock did know what he was going to do, but he was going to find something if only to keep going, if only to hide from the emptiness he was feeling.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim arrives on the Starbase

Jim Kirk had been heralded for the last few days as the “Hero of the Federation” and “Destroyer of Nero.” Jim had spent the same amount of time realizing that he absolutely despised being called a hero. He’d loved attention, but this was excessive. As a child, his uncle, who’d been his uncle first, had always ignored him or called him invisible.

So Jim’d been a fan of attention because no matter what people thought of him, he was seen. But that felt honest. Being called all these glorious names, that all felt like a big, fat lie. He’d felt innocent, righteously outraged when Spock had pulled him up for charges of academic dishonesty. Now, he’d never felt more dirty. He felt like that cheater that Spock thought he was. 

Starfleet’s Primary Fleet, as well as the remainder of the Secondary Fleet, was now at Starbase 005. That was where all of Starfleet was going now. That was where Jim was going now.

Just maybe a day ago, he’d been high on adrenaline. He’d begged the admiralty on Earth to let him beam aboard the Narada and see what he could do about it. When they’d refused, he’d laughed and tricked a transporter technician into beaming him aboard only seconds before the drill’d gone down and beaming had been made impossible. Jim had rescued Pike and then stolen a spaceship that had been in the cargo bay. 

He’d jettisoned the “red matter” at the Narada. The Narada had been encompassed in a black hole and destroyed, but not after having first destroyed Earth. Jim felt like Starfleet: always a little too slow to avert disaster, just like on Tar — 

Jim decided to avoid thinking about that. He’d flown to the nearest Starbase, and now he was being shipped off to Starbase 005. Rumor was he’d get a commendation and an officer’s rank. Jim found himself actually against it. He didn’t deserve rewards like that. And he’d been disobeying orders, too. People didn’t usually get commendations for that.

Yet Jim was getting one. 

And according to Starfleet scuttlebutt, Spock, who had followed all his orders, was getting dishonorably discharged. How roles reversed, and Jim was realizing he didn’t really want them to. Strange. Jim would rather be the one getting chewed out by the admiralty. He was used to that, not praise. Praise meant a little too little to him, especially praise from strangers like this.

Jim looked at the clock on the wall. Five hours left before he’d be arriving at Starbase 005. Five hours, and Jim wasn’t sure if he’d rather they hurried up or if he wanted them never to end. He’d have to wait and see.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

The shuttle had docked about ten minutes ago, and that was how long it’d taken for Jim to get out of the shuttle and figure out where he was even supposed to be staying. He hadn’t gone there yet. Usually, when he went places, he dropped things off where he was going to stay (if he’d bothered to figure that out ahead of time), but he didn’t have anything to drop off. The few things he’d owned had been on Earth when Nero’d gotten to it. 

Jim didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Partying? Who’d be doing that now? Funerals were the closest thing to it. Attending funerals? Those weren’t happening yet, not until there was a list of survivors. And where would they even start with funerals? Billions of living beings were dead in the blink of an eye. Study? There weren’t any classes for which he could study. Drink? He’d have plenty of company, but he didn’t find himself in the mood. Maybe later.

Jim resolved to walk through the hallways and familiarize himself with the base. He was somewhere on the fifth level when he heard a sound that made his heart stop.

Shouting, not in the argument sort of way but in the angry-mob-hell-bent-on-destruction sort of way. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to Jim, but it was one he’d never wanted to see again.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

_The jail was crowded. Hundreds crammed into a room that should’ve held maybe a single hundred tops. The stench was foul. It’d cause anyone to vomit except the people stuck there. Even guards kept out of it for the stench. Vomit. Shit. Piss. Sweat. People. Everything together, mixed. But when the mob came, it wasn’t smoke or noise that started the panic._

_Heat._

_Blazing._

_Everyone started screaming and then suddenly pushing. Falling and falling and squish and splash. Legs. Avoiding the legs. Jim was panicking, but it wasn’t the fire and the mob below that caused the panic, it couldn’t be. The prisoners were —_

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim blinked his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was here, Starbase 005, not a prison on Tarsus. He needed to focus on the present, where there was a very real mob. A very real mob with phasers and Starfleet training. jim took a deep breath. He was less emotionally compromised than they were.

It was up to him to make them see sense.

Jim took a deep breath and pushed through the mob until he was at the front. They were at a door. Jim didn’t remember whose door from the maps, but Jim had a pretty a good idea whose door it was. There was really only one person in the Federation that had that much hate these days. At least, only one person still living.

Jim could see that these people were murdering, a destructive force, and he understood that they had to be stopped. “Stop!” Jim shouted.

He got only a few weird looks from a few people at the front. Jim looked around fast. He needed to figure out a plan quickly before he got killed. Jim looked around again and noticed the intercom on the wall. Jim took a breath and pressed the button to project his voice. 

“Everyone, attention!” Jim snapped into the intercom. His voice projected across the Starbase. “This is J — Captain James Tiberius Kirk speaking.” 

That got the mob’s attention. They all stared at him, and buzzing energy surrounding them. Jim didn’t know what to think about everyone looking at him. He’d never expected the power to end a mob with his name. It was nice but even more terrifying than nice.

“You solve nothing. From death comes nothing but more death. If you kill this man, do you think you are any better than he is?” Jim realized that he didn’t blame Spock (for that was to whom he assumed the room belonged). He realized that Spock had to be suffering as much as these people. Jim could make decisions in a panic because he spent so much time in panic, but Spock? Spock had no reason to know how. It wasn’t his fault. Everything was Nero’s. “We need to focus on moving forward. We are in ruins, there is no kinder word for it. We need to build, move on . . . .” Jim continued on for a minutes, surprising even himself. 

The mob, Jim could tell, was still angry, but the people dispersed and went their separate ways. Jim sighed in relief and wiped his forehead, which he had not even realized was sweating. 

Why couldn’t he have been able to do that on — before? Why couldn’t it have worked then? 

Jim followed the people away, walking down in the direction he had been heading in before. His head was buzzing, and he was still unable to believe that the mob had gone away so easily. Was that what power felt like? Was it not something chilling and something to be feared? This was power. He’d always known it could be used for good, but to see it doing good was very different from imagining and hoping. 

Jim decided he would go get that drink now after all. He needed one.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Bones was already in the Starbase’s bar when Jim arrived. He was in tears and on his third bottle of bourbon. Jim’s eyes widened as he realized: Bones’s daughter, Joanna. She’d been at her mother’s house. On Earth. Joanna McCoy-Huxtable was dead. Killed by Nero. 

Jim suddenly had nothing he could say to his best friend. There were no words to take that pain away. There’d been no words to take the pain of that mob away, only words to get them to stop killing in its name. 

It made Jim feel shitty.

Everything that happened could only be blamed on Nero, but if he’d only been a little faster — 

No one else was thinking that of him. He’d kept the rest of the Federation from suffering that same fate. But he thought that maybe he was a little to blame. T There were no words to take that pain away. There’d been no pain to take the pain of that mob away either, only words to get them to stop killing and creating more grief. The pain all of them’d been through — it was unimaginable, indescribable. And yet, it had happened.

It made Jim feel like shit.

Everything that had happened — that was Nero’s fault. 

But Jim, he could have done something. He could have stopped Nero minutes sooner, and Earth would have been there. If he’d just been fastening — 

No one else thought that about Jim. To them, he was hero. He’d kept Nero from destroying the rest of the Federation. He was the only one who thought that maybe Jim could be as at fault as Spock. Jim suddenly found a kinship with him — both had had the power to keep planets from being destroyed and both had failed. 

Jim turned his attention back to Bones. Jim put his hand on Bones’s shoulder. Bones turned to look at him. Bones’s eyes were rimmed with red. His eyes were full of tears, his nose stuffy, and tear-tracks all across his cheeks. Bones stayed there for a moment and then leaned over and pulled Jim into a hug.

They’d never hugged before. Bones wasn’t a huggy person as far as Jim knew. Jim and Bones were like brothers, and Jim would not refuse his closest friend comfort. So he put his arms around Bones as his best friend cried. 

Jim would be lying if he said that tears weren’t in his own eyes. Jim’s tears weren’t for himself. He’d had nothing on Earth, not really. They were in sympathy for Bones, in pain for what his friend had lost. Jim didn’t know what to do about it. He’d been through hell once before. He had an advantage, he supposed. He didn’t think it was right to think of Tarsus of an advantage. He had coped before. He was coping now. 

“Come on,” Jim told Bones. “Why don’t you come back to my quarters? I don’t know where your quarters are and —” Jim decided he didn’t really have to explain to Bones right now. Bones was a bit too drunk to understand anyway, and he was following Jim without complaint (so yeah, Bones was pretty out of it).

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Watching his distraught and now passed out friend, Jim began to dictate a letter to the admiralty. The address would come last if only to prevent it being sent before he intended it to be sent. That’d happened before, and Jim was fully aware that for that to happen now could be the epitome of disastrous. 

Finally, Jim finished his dictation, and he addressed it to Admirals T’Alaro, Hayes, and Macbeth — the admirals in charge of the base. He played it back a single time and tweaked a couple details. He sent the message a few minutes later, making sure to mark the communication as a priority. 

He waited with bated breath for a response, just a simple thing:

“Your request is considered.”

He let out a relieved breath when he received it an hour later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will take requests regarding what will happen. As always, feedback is sincerely appreciated, so please leave a kudo or comment. I hope everyone who likes Valentine's Day had a good Valentine's Day, and for everyone who does not, I hope you had a good day anyway because good days are the key to live long and prosper.
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk comes up with a proposal

Spock looked up as he heard the shouting outside cease. He could not attach any real feelings to the sensation. What he felt was the barest hint of relief and surprise but not enough for Spock to truly notice their presence. He was more curious than anything about what could have stopped the mob. He had realized minutes before that his escape had been unlikely.

Spock had not felt. There was not the anger, the confusion, the loneliness, or the fear that there had been as Vulcan and then Earth had collapsed in on itself. Spock . . . was almost glad for the idea of death. He would not live in this suffocating numbness any longer. He needed to feel something. This void was killing him as surely as guilt and grief, yet he was unable to feel anything. Relief. He might feel relief at his own death. But still he had felt nothing.

Then the shouting outside his door had just ended. 

Spock blinked.

And then a voice echoed into his room. It was not a voice Spock would have expected to hear — not in defense of him, at any rate. It belonged to the cadet that had cheated on his test, the same one he had brought up on charges of academic dishonesty. The defense he wrought — Spock did not find himself caring. He would have been impressed or grateful or stunned just days ago. Now, no. He just stared blankly at the door. 

He wished it would all just cease.

Spock sank to the floor. Why could he not feel? He should feel. He should . . . . Spock needed to feel. This emptiness was as bad as the guilt because he felt wrong. His entire being was wrong. It was such a disconcerting feeling. He needed it to end, needed it to end. He could not deal with this much longer. His gaze flickered again to the knives in the kitchen. Maybe . . . ?

No.

No.

That was illogical.

Logic? What had that and rules done for him? Nothing. It had left billions dead, and left him like this. He was disgusting (he thought this from an outside perspective), a disgusting creature who could not even feel guilt for what he had allowed to happen.

Maybe he would use a knife, but . . . not yet. Not yet. Later. If he could not feel by then. Spock let out a breath.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Spock was wary as he walked through the hallway. He had to be on the lookout. The mob earlier . . . Spock wanted direction, not truly death, wanted to feel, not end all feeling. If he weren’t to be killed by angry people, he would have to be vigilant. Though, really, Spock doubted he would make much of an effort to stop anyone who attempted to end him.

There were footsteps, running in his direction. 

Spock spun quickly. Spock did not know what he intended — to fight an assailant, to see his assailant as they hurt him, to . . . . Spock was unsure, and it was not a feeling to which he was long accustomed. Perhaps Spock had not always been confident of himself, but of his actions, he had always been sure. Now, he is drowning in a sea of numbness, and there is no direction to him. There is nothing worth doing. There is just . . . nothing.

To say Spock was shocked when he turned around would have been inaccurate solely because he was incapable of feeling. He certainly had not been expecting to see the man that was approaching him.

James Tiberius Kirk — Captain, Savior of the Federation, Killed of Nero, and still the cadet that had cheated on his test. Kirk held all the cards here, and Spock did not find he had it in him to care any longer. He would have cared, once. 

Spock did not care.

Kirk stopped in his tracks and looked at Spock. He stared at him for a moment, but then his mouth opened slightly. Kirk blinked. Spock wondered idly if Kirk intended to stand there indefinitely or if there were some semblance of purpose to his arrival. After taking a deep breath, Kirk said, “I talked to the admiralty.” 

Spock stared back at Kirk as he waited for the other man to say what he actually intended to say.

Kirk half-chuckled, but the sound contained no mirth. “That's where you're supposed to say something to let me know you're listening.” 

Spock blinked.

Kirk shook his head. “Good enough. Anyway, I talked to the admiralty for you. They're a bit skeptical, but I think they might be listening.” He bit his lip for a second, for a second he was not the cocky young man he always seemed to be. It should have been disconcerting, but for Spock, it seemed right. “They've agreed to waive the farce they're calling a ‘court martial’ and say you're dishonorably discharged.”

Spock had not realized his head was drooping until it snapped up. No court martial? Once he would have been relieved, but now he just was. Spock did not understand why Kirk would do his when Spock had brought him in front of the entire Starfleet Academy for cheating. A single word escaped Spock's lips. “Why?”

Kirk shrugged. “Because.”

Spock continued looking at him.

“Because it was as much your fault as anyone else's in Starfleet. Because if they want to take it up with someone, they should be taking it up with Nero’s corpse. Look, truth is, I don't have a fucking clue.” Jim ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in odd places. “I guess . . . I don’t know.”

“Fascinating,” Spock muttered. He did not believe his voice to be loud enough for the human man to hear.

As it turned out, Spock was incorrect. “What?” Kirk crossed his arms. “Are you going to tell me I shouldn’t’ve or something? ‘Cause that isn’t going to fly.” He exhaled slowly as if attempting to relieve some stress. “Only bad thing is that my vouching for you might not be enough for you to, well, be able to serve on a ship.”

“Serve on a ship?” Spock repeated. He was unsure if he had heard the human man correctly. 

Kirk nodded. “Diplomatic ship, to help relief efforts.”

“You are vouching for me?” Spock could not understand why anyone would be helping him. He also could not believe the prospect of serving on a ship. It was a purpose, and for days, a purpose he had not had. Suddenly, it was a light shining through clouds of numbness and a sky of pain.

“It isn't enough,” Kirk reiterated. 

Spock thought for barely a second before he again spoke. “What do they want?”

Kirk looked away and grimaced. “You’re not going to like it.” Spock noticed that Kirk seemed very sure of this. Spock somehow understood that this meant that Kirk was perhaps not so keen on the idea either.

“Attempting to spare my feelings would be illogical,” Spock informed him. There were no feelings for Kirk to spare. These were words he had said so many times previously, but this was the first time they had ever been truth. Spock continued to stare at Kirk as he waited for him to continue.

“Right. Here goes nothing then. They want us to bond.” Here Kirk paused and ran a hand through his hair. He laughed nervously. “Apparently it shows trust or something — but isn’t it like a marriage or something and it’s sort of absurd to expect us to marry just as a show of faith or someshit, but it’s looking like that might be the only thing they’ll accept and yeah.” 

Spock blinked.

Kirk exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I’m sorry. I just thought you should know all the facts. It’s just — it’s just it’s not fair, what they’re doing to you.” Jim bit his lip.

Spock did not respond. He could not understand why anyone was trying to fix what was happening to him. He felt nothing. He could not feel grief for his planets or hurt or anything. He should feel, should he not? Why could he not feel? Spock’s gaze was one of confusion as he observed Kirk.

“Look, conversation’s generally not supposed to be a one-way thing here, so what gives?” Kirk crossed his arms and shifted from foot to foot with a sort of nervous energy. 

“There is nothing to say, so speaking would be illogical.” Spock’s tone was flat, that unemotional sound so different from how it had been.

Kirk’s lips parted in an “O” shape. His cheeks were red as he looked away. He took a hesitant step back. “I . . . I’ll just go then.” Kirk straightened his shirt and took another step back. Then, contrary to his previous actions, he reached forward and wrapped his hand around the bare skin of Spock’s wrist.

_Warmthdespaircomfortsousedtoalonealonehelpgoingtohelpneedtohelpwhatelseistherestaystrongforeverythingpushbackgodeveryoneisdeaddyingfirefearnotnownotnowyearsagostrongstronghelp_

“Just . . . consider it.”

Spock missed the words. His eyes widened as Kirk’s emotions barraged his mind. They rolled from Kirk over to Spock. They danced around his mind, circling the barrier, the wall that kept him from feeling anything for himself. For himself he could not feel, but these foreign emotions? They held not the depth of his own Vulcan emotions, but he could feel them.

And for a second, he could feel his own emotions, too.

It was a breath of fresh air being sucked into empty lungs. His numbness had done nothing to prepare him for the reality of feelings. When he felt Kirk’s emotions, he felt for a moment his own emotions.

Anger

Grief

Pain

Hurt

Agony

Loss

And then nothing. Kirk’s hand left his wrist. Spock realized that his lack of feeling restarted that very second.

“Okay?” Kirk asked, and Spock had no clue about what he was speaking but nodded anyway. He was left staring mutely as Kirk left and walked down the hallway.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Spock sat on the edge of his bed with his back stiff and his hands folded neatly in his lap. His stare was blank, directed at the wall on the other side of the room. Spock's quarters were a true reflection of his being, his state of mind — not subject to emotional attachment and utterly devoid of soul. Unlike his room, however, Spock thought.

Kirk’s offer was illogical. While Spock could not deny the appeal of the offer, of a sense of purpose, bonding was out of the question. It was too intimate, and it was not an equal relationship. Spock would be giving nothing to a bond while Kirk gave everything. It would be unfair and against the teachings of Surak.

But Spock felt stagnant like a fly trapped and amber, and he should feel and he felt wrong. He was lost, drowning, and he hated it. He needed to feel something if only to prove to himself, to everyone that he, too, was a being worth life. He was nothing. He could not bring himself to care about the destruction of Vulcan or of Earth. He could not even feel the hole his mother’s death had left in his mind. 

Why was he even alive if he could not care about life?

His mother had cared.

She would be ashamed that he could not care.

That thought should have been agony, but it was nothing; it was nothing to him.

He should feel.

The last time he felt — for even a second — was touching Kirk’s wrist. Spock shut his eyes. Objectively, he knew he should not bond with Kirk,but the idea of feeling again? How could he say no to that? He needed to feel, and there was Kirk, offering what was needed to make him feel? Would it even be possible to say no to it? Spock did not want to be controlled by his emotions. He needed to control them as was the Vulcan way. He still needed emotions. He needed emotions.

And he would have them.

He looked down at his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spock . . . . *shakes head*
> 
> Feedback would be appreciated!
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim discovers fame is exhausting

Jim Kirk didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t an unusual feeling, but this? This was more than he knew. Everyone around him was suffering. Suffering more than he was. That wasn’t to say he was unaffected. It was just to say that he had not lost anything, not the way everyone else had. Earth had stopped being his home the second he left it the first time. Maybe sooner. Maybe it wasn’t ever his home. He didn’t have family to lose either. So yeah, he didn’t feel the same way as everyone else. He’d gone through that once, losing his home to genocide, but that was years ago.

It wasn’t now. It wasn’t now. It wasn’t now.

Maybe he’d believe it he just kept saying it.

So how could he connect with those who’d lost everyone.

Bones had lost a daughter. Jim’d never had a child. He could be there for his friend, but he could never relate.

He was an alien among his people in a way.

He hated it.

Praise? Well, that stopped helping. Actually, it’d never helped, and he just wanted off the fucking pedestal. He wanted to be part of everyone else. He didn’t feel grief, but what did he have to grieve for?

He felt disgust for the loss of life. He wished he could have saved them. He hated that so many were dead. It was a shock that so many he’d known were gone. It was not personal, just abhorrent. In this, he seemed to be alone.

Jim bit his lip and looked over at the sleeping form of his friend. Bones . . . this had destroyed him. He’d lost everything, and he was not himself. Jim would be lying if he even hinted that he had any idea what to do about it. If he were being honest, he’d say that he’d always been the one relying on Bones. Of course, he’d never admit to that, but still. Point was, Jim had very little idea what to do about anyone looking up to him. 

(He did, with death, death, everyone else dead, and he was the oldest, and so many children, and they had to live, but Jim wasn’t going to think about that)

Jim took a swig of Bones’s left-over bourbon and hoped that maybe there’d be a way he could help someone. Rebuilding and helping would be his first priority

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim’s head throbbed like all the harpies of Hades were staging a full-scale war on it. In other words, Jim wanted the light to just go on somewhere because he was so fucking miserable and _oh-God-can-the-banshee-moaning-stop_. And then he was suddenly awake. There were sobs coming from across the room, and Jim realized that it was all coming from Bones.

Jim quickly decided that his friend was more important than his headache. His headache — almost migraine, truthfully — cried out in protest, throbbing at his temples, making his stomach want to mutiny. The light was pain. Sitting up was pain. Thinking was pain. Jim could do with one of Bones’s anti-hangover hypos. All of them had been destroyed, Bones was crying, so Jim would have to deal.

Groaning slightly as he took a first tentative step across the room, Jim took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “Bones?”

Bones looked up when he heard his name called but quickly looked away again. He didn’t do that quickly enough to hide how red his eyes were or the tear-tracks all over his cheeks. It was the first time Jim had seen his friend honest-to-God cry. Unsure what else to do, he just sat down next to Bones and wrapped an arm around the other man’s shoulders.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

It was well into the evening before Bones had fallen asleep. He’d not stopped crying in all that time. Hours, and still there were tears running down his face, a wetness in his eyes. Jim’d try talking to him, tried maybe three, four times, but Bones didn’t reply once. It was the first time Jim’d ever appreciated his mother in truth. The entire time he’d been recovering from Tarsus, the entire time he’d stared blankly at walls in memory, the entire time he’d stolen food and fucked around to prove that he was not what he’d been on Tarsus. All that time, there she’d been. She hadn’t been distant for the first time he could remember. 

It was from the memory of her that Jim drew on to help his friend. Now, there wasn't anything else Jim could do to help him. Exhaling softly so as not to wake his friend, Jim extracted himself from Bones’s grasp and stood up. After stretching, he quietly exited the room and walked down he hallway. No fewer than three people requested his autograph, and he had to swallow his discomfort every single time he signed one.

Jim walked over to the mess and sat down a bench in the corner. If he were to judge only off the level of noise, the number of voices, he might have missed the deadened mood, the stiffness to the postures. It was loud, but the voices were loud whispers as if everyone were trying to remain quiet and failing miserably.

He replicated chocolate cake because chocolate tasted like hope, like finally not having to be hungry, like he was finally going to survive. He didn't do more than pick at it. He wasn't hungry. His already nonexistent appetite died a little more when he heard someone call out, “Hey, look, it's Kirk — you know, that guy that killed Nero!” 

Jim liked attention, but as everyone looked at him, all he wanted was for a hole to open up in the floor and suck him out into space where his blood would boil and he'd freeze and explode. His knees shaking slightly, he stood up and picked his red tray off the table. 

He barely hesitated before shoving the cake off his plate and briskly cramming the plate and tray into the slot in the wall reserved for dirty dishes. He fled the hall immediately after with his fans practically nipping at his heels. _At least,_ he thought grimly, _the media wasn't allowed onto the Starbase yet._

To Jim's dismay, he couldn't think of a room nearby where he could disappear from sight. The nearest one he could think of was literally five floors up. Making a weird half-grimace half-panting-for-breath facial expression, Jim decided that he was going up to that observation room, damn the consequences. 

Fortunately, it was easy to get the turbolift shut before anyone else squeezed their way in. He pressed the appropriate button with sweaty palms and shaking hands. The lift carried him up the five floors, and casting a furtive glance around, Jim was able to determine that he didn't need to hide his face. The corridor was empty. He closed his eyes and swallowed before walking at a firm and steady pace to the observatory.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Ever since Jim was a little kid with a mother in Starfleet engineering, he’d liked the observation decks. The idea of being able to see so much out the expansive viewing portals was phenomenal. Riverside and Iowan corn had never been the most interesting thing to look at when he’d snuck onto the under-construction ships in the shipyard. After he’d survived hell, he’d been able to sneak onto the observation deck of the last version of the Enterprise. It was about a year before that ship’d met an untimely end.

Still, the view of the stars had been the most incredible thing he’d seen in his entire life. They’d been everywhere, so different from Earth or Tarsus. He couldn’t see any planets. Just stars and emptiness. It was that view that made Jim jump at Pike’s offer.

Looking at the stars now, he felt a sort of terror almost. Anything could be out there and anything could happen. Nothing in existence was safe. It was a terror that nearly filled him with excitement. He could be among those stars, learning and helping against this sort of thing. He liked the thought. If scuttlebutt were to be believed, then there was every chance the Admiralty was going to offer him his own ship. Jim didn’t know if he wanted to be captain of a regular Starfleet ship.

It’d been the dream that’d kept him going through the last three years. But now, he wondered if there were more of a way for him to help. Word had it also that there was going to be a Vulcai-Terran colony — combined so that neither species ever had to be on its own as it rebuilt. They both had need. Jim wasn’t sure that would work out too well because the species had very different ideals.

But it was that idea that had Jim thinking.

The colony was going to need scouts, people who could explore, find resources for them, track down survivors, find a new homeworld that might be mutually agreeable. Figure out a way around the differences in opinions. 

When Vulcan had been destroyed, the nearest planet, called T’Khut by the Vulcan people, had been destroyed. In fact, the only planets left in the system had been orbiting the beta and gamma stars. With Earth’s destruction, the moon, Mars, and Venus colonies were destroyed, too. Black holes were destructive little fuckers, and Nero — the fact Nero had made them made Nero the perpetrator of the greatest genocide the galaxy had seen.

Jim’s previous to the request to the admiralty had been met with displeasure, but Jim had gotten an idea, and he wasn't about to let theoretical resistance get in his way. He sighed and ran a hand before mentally going over what he'd say. He'd probably come up with an entirely new speech when he actually had to say it. He didn’t waste much time going over the particulars as a result.

He turned his attention back to the window. He wasn't quite ready to leave the observatory yet. It wasn't a function of people possibly waiting for him outside the locked door so much as he needed a moment to gather his thoughts and a moment's peace to prepare himself for the day. He used to socialize for this, but with people lining up to put him up on a pedestal, socializing just didn't help him.

Swallowing, Jim looked out the viewscreen, his hand resting on the white wall just below it. He looked to see if he recognize any stars, but even before he tried, he knew it was a futile action. He did not know the star charts well enough to know every star from any location. He doubted anyone did.

There was a beep from the comm on the wall. Jim wasn't in the mood to answer, so he ignored it. The comm stopped beeping, but a moment later, it started up again. This repeated maybe four or five times before Jim left the viewscreen with a growl and walked over to the comm. He pressed the button and was instantly met with a relieved sigh.

“Kirk,” came a voice Jim’d never expected to hear again (or to ever address him in a positive manner), “I need your help.”

Jim blinked rapidly and then stared dumbly at the comm.

“Kirk?” Uhura asked frantically from the comm.

Jim came back to his senses, but he was still not over his surprise. “Uhm, yeah, hi?”

“Why the hell did I think talking to you would be a good thing?!” she moaned, clearly irritated with Jim's current lack of eloquence. “Ugh. Look, we need your help, so would you please come with me?!” 

Jim pressed the button that caused the door to slide open. “What happened?!” It was then that he noticed the redness to her eyes and the grim set to her jaw. He wasn't sure whether she were angry or sad or just plain upeet, but whatever happened, he was more than painfully aware that it was not good. 

Uhura swallowed and fidgeted slightly. She took a deep breath and cleared her throat prior to speaking, and when she spoke, it was clear that she struggled to get these words out, “It's Spock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos to anyone who caught the Hamilton reference. As always, thanks for reading and feedback is appreciated.
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to Spock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the new tags: self-harm is featured in this chapter

When Spock had picked up the knife, he had not fully known what he was doing. There was a void in him, gaping and irrepressible. He had needed to get it to go away because he did not want to feel nothing. He wanted to feel, so desperately had he wanted it. He had thought, and perhaps it was those thoughts, the _I-cannot-force-this-on-anyone-else_ s and the _I-am-not-worthy_ s, that pushed him in this far. James Kirk made him feel emotions, but James Kirk he could not have, could not let himself have. But he had needed the emotions. 

And so he had resorted to the only thing of which he could think. But that hadnot gone well by anyone’s standards. For the first time in his life, he’d done, done without a single thought. He had gone, his hand trembling slightly to the “kitchen” counter and curled his fingers around the knife. It had been cold in his hand, and he had just narrowly avoided having it land on his foot. He had stared at the knife woodenly for a second before truly reason that it had fallen from his hand. He blinked and stared at it for another long second before bending over and picking it back up.

The hilt still clutched in his left hand, he had run his hand down the blade. It had not cut his finger, but then he had been careful to keep his fingers on the flat of the short blade. The blade had been cold, nearly icy against Spock’s own warm skin. He had sucked in a sharp breath, the air almost painful in his lungs. But it was not painful.

Spock knew no pain, and he needed to. He needed to suffer just as everyone else was. He swallowed, and it was with that thought that he had pressed the blade against the gelatinous flesh of his wrists, the blade pressing almost painfully against the skin. He could feel the sharp blade nipping at his skin. It hurt, and mouth open and gaping, Spock stared at it. It was not until he had begun to drag the blade across his skin did a thin emerald worm of blood slither out onto his arm. He gasped aloud. 

His hand shook as the knife cut into his skin. Spock did not know if it were pain or anticipation or something else. But it hurt, and that just egged him on. The pain was almost clarity. It was something to be desired. It was not quite the emotional anguish which he should have felt, but it was pain, and for that he nearly laughed in glee. Had he not been Vulcan, he might have.

His wrist throbbed, stung, and hurt all at once, but Spock revelled in that as he passed the knife to his other hand. He somehow did not see the blood splattered on the dark floor, did not notice it when his boot half-slid in it. As his arm turned over so he could cut the other arm, blood leaked out of the wound, staining his black pants and splashing against the pool of blood on the floor. The cut on his right arm was less precise than that on the left. It turned and weaved horizontally across his wrist.

And fuck, did it hurt. 

Was he just noticing how much it hurt?

Spock’s dark eyes followed the blood leaking out of his wrists in its descent to the floor. When had so much of it left him?

_Why was his head feeling fuzzy? Was it supposed to —_

Darkness.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Spock was not aware of what happened next, but the details were relayed to him when he awakened.

First: “You lost 1.2 L of blood, man.What the hell were you thinking?!”

To this Spock said nothing. There was nothing he could say to that.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Nyota had been the one to find him. She had come over to check on him since she had seen neither hide nor hair of him all day. She’d been hanging out in the mess for a while, figuring that she’d meet up with him and have to come out for food at some point. As one hour turned into two, a little bit of worry started to seep into her gut.

But around the third hour began to creep by, Nyota’d gotten drawn into conversation with one of the other communications cadets-turned-officers, a Caitian girl by the name M’Ress.M’Ress had finally had to go do something around hour four, and only then did Nyota realize that it was already late afternoon, hours after Spock usually would have eaten.

Nyota ambled down to Spock’s quarters. She had not yet realized how dire it all was. She had thought that maybe he’d just lost his appetite or thought starving himself would be a good little self-flagellation. She had never thought it could be a matter of life and death the way it was.

Nyota had pressed the comm button next to the entrance to his quarters first. When there was no answer, she pressed it again. After that, her hand started trembling as she pressed the button. Her breathing came in ragged gasps. After ten tries, she realized that Spock was not coming to the door. Back when she’d been dating Scotty a couple years back and before they’d broken up when he’d gotten exiled to fucking Delta Vega, she could remember Scotty telling her that the doors were designed so that kicking them would do no good. 

Nyota found herself suddenly very grateful that the remaining admiralty recognized that the survivors would want to be able to carry around at least some weapon. As such, Nyota had a phaser with her. She took a deep breath to steady her hand and used it to cut the door open. She pushed the now halved door since it was now able to be shoved inward. The sight before her would haunt her sleep:

Spock fallen back on the bed. Green blood soaked into the white bedclothes, still-made bed. Green blood spattered on the floor. Spock’s skin almost purple from bloodloss. Spock unconscious. 

There was only one word that Nyota Uhura, best living human linguist could stutter: “Shit.” 

She called the number for a medical emergency. She explained the situation in as much detail as she could manage. The person who answered — “Cadet Piper, Mark Piper, sir” — flat-out refused to treat Spock when hearing who it was. Nyota had felt such desperation, greater desperation even, just days before, yet it was an entirely new sensation. She bandaged Spock’s arms to see if that would help some. It did but very little.

She sucked in a deep breath. She had heard Spock mention something about Kirk. It seemed like Kirk might be her only ally in this. She had to try.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

In the end, Kirk managed to get his friend McCoy to help out and quickly, too. It had been a near thing, he said, but Spock was saved. According to McCoy, Spock’s blood pressure had been dangerously low, his breathing slow. Hypovolemic shock, whatever that meant. McCoy had to sew up the wounds.

And then had come the tricky part. They had managed to save Spock's father, but how were they supposed to tell the man that his son had nearly committed suicide? 

Kirk had tapped into the comm for the space station while McCoy was treating Spock because he could and he was bored as all get-out. If he had a better reason, he had not mentioned it. It was through that that they managed to overhear the arrival of a man claiming to be Spock. Also, Nyota’s ex, Scotty, but she was ignoring that detail. 

Kirk looked at her and grimaced. “It's a long shot, especially with that guy being held in the brig, but it's worth a shot. Bones says we need Vulcan blood for the transfusion. You get Sarek and I get this other Spock dude?”

Nyota had just nodded, and less than half an hour later, each had returned with the intended Vulcan.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Neither Kirk nor Nyota were operating under the impression that Vulcans were emotionless bastards. Both had seen Vulcan emotions and seen their depth. Neither had understood until they saw Sarek’s face as he gazed down at Spock’s face.

Sarek, blanching, sank to his knees. “My son.” That was a broken whisper, so emotional, so terrified. “Spock.” He inhaled, the breath being sucked in loudly. “Give me something to do to help. Do not make me wait.”

The alleged other Spock looked at them. “I am a Spock from another universe. Use my blood.” 

Everyone looked at him as if he were crazy.

“I can prove it. Father, would you permit me to meld with you?”

It was only a few agonizing seconds, but then Sarek was nodding. “Yes, yes.” He turned to McCoy. “He speaks the truth. Now I implore you to save my son.”

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

When Spock had finally woken up, it was to five faces. None of them would he ever have wanted to have see him in this state.

His father, whom he had always known to be strict, Vulcan, unemotional. How unimpressed he must have been with his half-human son in that moment. Spock could not hold his father's gaze.

Nyota, his friend, whom had always admired him for his foreignness. How normal, human he must have seemed to her then, indulging in this human behavior. Spock could not hold Nyota’s gaze.

Another man, whom Spock did not recognize who seemed somehow so very familiar. How illogical he must seem to this man, how stupid. Spock could not hold this other man's gaze. 

The doctor, whom Spock had never known personally, who had growled and grumbled and griped at Spock for his lack of emotion in the face of his planet's death. How proud he must be of Spock. Spock could not hold the doctor's gaze.

Then there was Kirk. Kirk, who had done his best to outthink Spock. Kirk, who was for some unknown reason determined to help. Logically, he should have been the one Spock wanted to look to the least. But there was some sort of empathy there when brown eyes met blue, and Spock suddenly found it hard to wrench his gaze away. 

“You lost 1.2 L of blood, man.What the hell were you thinking?!”

“Shut up, Bones,” Kirk hissed at his friend, plastering a hand over his friend's frowning lips. Spock just watched.

He did not feel anything not connected to the bandages and stitches in his wrists. There was no physical pain, very little physical sensation. Absently, Spock realized that someone had given him a hypo full of painkillers. In the absence of everything else, what Spock did feel was this:

Shame.

Mortification.

Fear of what he might do.

These were not good feelings. Spock reasoned that he deserved them. Spock forced himself to look up at the five people in front of him. In quiet words that were only barely audible, he whispered, “ _Nemaiyo._ ” _Thank you._ He was not sure how glad he was for their actions in saving his life, but he knew to thank them. If he did not, they would worry about him even more.

Kirk stared down at Spock, and it made Spock feel vaguely uncomfortable. Without first requesting permission, Kirk sat down on the foot of Spock's bed. Spock inhaled softly. In Kirk, he saw no silent judging or fear or shock. The expression in that face was understanding, and Spock did not know what to do with that. Spock did not want to have to know. 

After what felt like a million years, Kirk stood up. “I'll be back.”

And then he left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed, and all feedback is adored.
> 
>  
> 
> _Additionally, if anyone would like to look over some stuff I am writing, I am looking for two people to help with some stuff I am writing. I would like to be able to get to know these people a little in addition to having them look at my writing. I need honest opinions about the two stories I have in mind. I need these people to be polite but not to spare my feelings when giving me suggestions._
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something a rather long time coming.

Jim stood in front of the admiralty, arms cross in a defensive stance. This was nothing like his disciplinary hearing days ago. This was him being the one in charge. The three admirals — T’Alaro, Hayes, and Macbeth — stood almost impassively on the other side of the dark metal desks. Jim had developed a rather intense hatred for these three individuals. They were the people who'd deprived Spock of everything that might have kept him going.

“Fuck you!” Jim snapped at the admirals.

“Mind your language, Captain. We are still your superior officers,” Macbeth snapped, soul patch quivering, at Jim. 

Jim nearly growled under his breath at them. It took an almost Vulcan level of self-restraint not to. “D’you know what happened to Spock? What do you think the public’d think if they heard Starfleet was driving its officers to depression and suicide because they followed orders?!”

“The public does not care about the life of the man who let two planets be obliterated,” T’Alaro pointed out, and wasn't she just the pinnacle of Vulcan logic and detachment? “Your threat is null.”

Jim marched over and slammed his fist down on her desk. “Right, but that isn't all, you know. See, didn't you think that maybe Spock wanted to disobey your shitty orders and go after Nero?! How much discipline would you have when you have the chance to go after the man who destroyed your fucking home?!” Jim exhaled sharply. “Not as much as he did.”

Macbeth’s eye twitched. “You are not in charge here. Dismissed.”

“No, I'm damn well staying,” Jim retorted, lips pursed. “See, you're not taking in all your damn facts. He should be honored for his discipline, not punished. You know, a lot of people would prefer his discipline over my creative thinking. But here's the truth: you want any easy way out.”

“Captain,” Hayes warned, voice low and dangerous.

“See, I get it, can't have Spock on a ship because of public fucking outcry, but you're cruel and undeserving of your positions. But you don't have to destroy him. Get him on a supply ship for the colonies and make him the face of the rebuilding effort!” Jim's nostrils flares, and his blue eyes were tsunamis waiting to crash against the land, his foes, and wipe out all in his path.

“Have you finished?” T’Alaro queried, the very image of fake politeness.

“You just hate that Spock had the chance to stop it and didn't because he was following you guys’s orders! You just hate that it's your fault that Earth and Vulcan are gone! You hate that you gave those fucking orders that damned billions of innocent lives. Yeah, I see what you're up to, trying to stay sane by keeping the blame away from yourselves!” 

“Enough!” snapped Macbeth, eyes blazing. “Enough! How dare you request to meet us just to - to accuse us of this, this madness!” He was a wolf, spitting at his prey.

Jim was not cowed. Admiral Hayes was looking askance, and Jim thought he could see tears in those green eyes. T’Alaro looked unaffected, but Jim could see that she was stiffer than she had been.

“Starfleet Order 104, Section C, Regulation 619: if you are emotionally compromised such that you are unable to make rational decisions, you must be relieved of command. Any medical officer will confirm that you are psychologically unfit for command. I recommend you save face and admit it now instead of having a court martial.” Jim fought back a smirk.

The admirals stared at him a moment. T’Alaro, to Jim’s infinite surprise, was the first to acquiesce. Hayes just nodded. Macbeth growled at the others but agreed also. The three admirals no longer suited for command and Pike still recovering, Jim was now the highest ranking active Starfleet Officer. Followed by Bones. 

Jim couldn't undo the dishonorable discharge the admirals had given Spock, but Jim might be able to finagle it so that Spock could help the colony.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

There were things Jim never expected to hear people to say or to hear certain people say and he could only flounder. When Jim walked back into Spock's quarters was one of these moments. Sarek grabbed his arm the instant he entered. 

“Captain,” Sarek said. There was something in his tone, too, that Jim instantly recognized for what it was where others might have dismissed the thought simply because Sarek was Vulcan.

Just as Sarek was about to continue, James interrupted him, “Ambassador.” Jim gave his most compassionate smile. It was a practiced one. Jim would have been lying had he said he didn't see Sarek as an enemy. Jim knew he should try to see it more like Sarek did. Like his mom did all those years ago. His mom had cared, and Jim knew Sarek cared too. For the first time in his memory, his mom hadn't been distant. She had comforted him those first few months, done her best. She hadn't been able to drive away all his monsters, and one day, he snapped.

But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. It had been years since he'd thought about it like this, but even now, when he thought about it properly, he struggled to put all that distance between now and when he was a teenager just come home from Tarsus. What Winona’d done for him, he'd resented so much. He still felt bitter about Tarsus, about how she'd messed up. He'd been worse because of it for so long. 

He realized Sarek wanted to help, but he wanted to do it as Winona had.

Jim was worried by how much he wanted to do the same thing.

“Nyota mentioned that Spock had said something the admiralty being able to help if you bond with Spock,” Sarek began. His voice was quiet and toneless, but it still gave away his worry. “If you bond, you would be able to keep him alive. Bond with him.”

There were a lot of questions that came to Jim's mind then: _What about me? Isn't this non-consensual? Shouldn't we worry about what Spock wants? Do you actually think this help? Don't you think your son is smart enough to figure out a way around this if he wants?_ There were others, too, but he gave voice to none of them. 

So once again, Jim plastered his most compassionate smile to his face. “I'll think about it, Ambassador, but I'm not going to do it without his consent.” With that, Jim turned and walked over to where the others were still congregated around Spock.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

“Night” had fallen, or at the very least, the space station was quieter be a useful most of its occupants had decided it was time to sleep. Uhura had fallen asleep in a chair she'd dragged from the small table in the corner over to the side of Spock's bed. Sarek was meditating in the another section of Spock's quarters because he was loathe to be too far from his son but unable to meditate properly so close to the humans. Bones and Ambassador Spock had both decided to return to their own quarters.

Jim, for his part, was sitting at the table in the corner, his feet propped up on the two other chair still at the table. He had a data PADD in his hand because he had a lot of paperwork to do. Who would have thought commandeering a space station would result in this much paperwork?

Spock shifted in his sleep. As the room was generally quiet except for snore from Uhura and the occasional creak of a chair as Jim repositioned himself in his chair, Spock shifting in his bed created a rustle that could likely be heard from even the other room.

Jim looked up from his paperwork just as Spock whimpered. It was such an uncharacteristic sound that Jim decided to get up and walk over to the side of Spock's bed. He knelt down beside it and wrapped his hand around the bare skin above the bandage on Spock’s wrist. Remembering Vulcans were touch telepaths, Jim tried to protect waves of calm and comfort.

Jim was pretty sure he failed completely because a moment later, Spock's eyes fluttered open. “What are you doing?” 

Spock’s tone wasn't accusatory, but Jim retracted his hand anyway. “Sorry.”

Spock swallowed and something softened in his face. He lifted his arm. It trembled slightly as he moved it up and grabbed Kirk's own wrist. Spock's eyes met Jim's, and Jim thought Spock must still be half-asleep. He doubted Spock would do that in his right mind. “I do not mind.”

There was something almost ecstatic in Spock's face that even Jim didn't understand, and he understood Spock's position better than most. There was silence for a time because neither Spock nor Jim knew what to say to one another.

Then, at the same instant, Spock asked, “Why do you care?” and Jim declared, “I am so never taking over a space station again.” They stared at each other for a moment as they decided who would start speaking first.

“You took over the space station?” Spock queried. He sounded vaguely amused by the thought.

Jim ran his free hand through his hair. He ducked his head slightly. “Ummm . . . yeah. The admiralty said they were emotionally compromised over the orders they gave. Who'd’ve thought? Anyway, due to . . . everything . . . I'm somehow the highest-ranking officer. I have a space station now.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I take it that the admirals did not admit emotional compromise of their own accord.”

Jim gave a faintly embarrassed shrug. “It took surprisingly little persuading, but they did. I was sort of hoping to sic Bones on them.” His tone was light, but it was veiling a rather deep irritation and impatience with the admiralty.

“Congratulations,” Spock said dryly.

“I can't undo your dishonorable discharge,” Jim told him. Jim grimaced, his irritation for a moment slipping through. Spock did not look surprised, merely resigned. “I'm sorry about that. I seriously searched through all the regs and shit, but nada. Permanent decision. But I've figured out an alternative. D’you want to hear?”

Jim looked down at Spock to realize that the half-Vulcan was already asleep again. Jim looked down at his own wrist. Spock's grip on it had not loosened in the man's sleep. Jim placed his hand on Spock's with the intent of prying it off, but then he looked down at Spock's face and decided the hand could stay.

Jim, as he placed his head on Spock's stomach because he had nothing else to use as a pillow, resigned himself to a bad kink in his back when he woke up.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Bones came in first thing in the morning to check on Spock. Bones hadn't cared much for Spock and was angry with the man for following the orders that had gotten Earth destroyed, but when he had a patient, he was grumpy but professional and one hell of a mother hen. Bones was surprised to see Jim resting his head on Spock's stomach and the two men holding hands. 

Bones shook his head and looked down at the PADD on the table. There were files on there, he saw, files that Jim should not have had the clearance for. Bones figured that Jim had just hacked them mostly because that would have been typical Jim Kirk behavior.

Having checked Spock’s vitals quickly, Bones shook Jim awake. “You alright, kid?”

Jim looked up at him with bleary eyes. “Huh?” Jim was not a morning person. If he'd actually been properly asleep (which was, admittedly, a rare occurrence), he couldn't function properly until after his first cup of coffee. This was why he devoted very little of time to sleep and quite a lot of his time to figuring out what his favorite coffee was. It was debatable that he was more functional in a crisis scenario or with a hangover than when he regularly woke up.

Bones chuckled. “How’re you doing?” 

Jim fell back asleep.

“Fine, be that way,” Bones grumbled. Sighing, he turned to leave.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

When Jim finally woke up, he found that Spock was already awake and had removed his hand from Jim’s wrist. He didn't look apologize for the fact he'd fallen asleep like that or the fact that it appeared he'd been watching Jim for a little bit of time before Jim’d woken up. Jim stood up and got a coffee from the replicator. The replicated coffee always tasted something like motor oil, but Jim wasn't in the mood to spend any more effort to get some, so this was going to have to do.

“James,” Spock began, “you did not answer my question. Why are you helping me.”

 _Shit,_ thought Jim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got my SAT scores back. Seriously happy about that. 
> 
> There will be another chapter before we get back to Spock's POV.
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed. All comments appreciated.
>
>> A Virto Musae   
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim's story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: genocide, fire, mobs, suicide attempt -- Tarsus IV in a nutshell

When Jimmy Kirk had been twelve, he'd driven his father's Corvette off a cliff. He'd been so, so angry. Frank and Sam had been at it again. Jimmy hated it when they fought. He despised it. Sam would lock himself in his room for days, which meant Jimmy was left to be the object of Frank's alcohol-driven rage.

But this time, Frank had kicked Sam out, and Sam packed his backpack and left. And Jimmy didn't know how he was supposed to deal with it. Just as Sam disappeared on the horizon, Frank had tossed a towel at Jimmy and told him to go clean his fucking Corvette. 

Jimmy could remember Sam's ire at Frank always claiming that beauty as his own. Jimmy wasn't in his right mind, and he thought that maybe if he took it out of Frank's grasp, maybe Sam’d love him enough to come back.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

It took being sent off to Tarsus IV for Jimmy to learn how wrong he was. He had been so wrong. Jimmy found himself in a love-hate relationship with the Starfleet prep school he was attending. The dorms were attached to the most imposing building, which was basically both the Capitol and White House for the colony. Jimmy, however, had been given permission to stay with his two aunts, Angelica and Fae, for most of his time at school. He would only have to stay in the dorms when he was an on-duty member of Kodos’s youth guard.

Jimmy didn't think about how he would have to serve as an armed guard. He never really had reason to. As one of the latest enrollments in the Academy, it would be a year before Kodos would trust him enough to have him as a guard. Therefore, Jimmy would go from his aunts’ to the Academy all but three days of the eight-day Tarsian week.

Afterschool, Jimmy did normal kid things. He'd play ball, bike around, play video games, read literature, do homework. It was the first time he'd had the freedom to do any of it. He loved it.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jimmy Kirk’d never actually thought about when he’d end up as one of Kodos’s guards. When he finally did think about it, he already was one. That was the thing about the future — no one ever thought about it until it was too late. Everyone ignored what was said about the fungus. They thought it would just go away or the scientists would fix it. Jimmy was like everyone else in this.

Time passed, as time was wont to do, and Jimmy slept and woke up and slept and woke again. He didn't think or feel much else. Jimmy wouldn't ever quite figure out what alerted him to the truth. 

It was as he was going to bed one night that he figured it out. When he realized, he stares blankly at the wall. He didn't cry. He just couldn't make them come. He felt nothing. A deep breath of air. A deep breath of air released shakily. He shut his eyes and dragged his palms down his cheeks.

He stood up and walked out of the dorms. There were no guards outside it. There didn't have to be. Jimmy was the first to try to leave of any of them. There was no reason to. They were dulled, a haze in their mind. They did their jobs while half-aware. 

When Jimmy Kirk looked outside at the colony, he thought for the first time in months. He had thought it was only a single week.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

When Jimmy Kirk looked out at the colony, he changed his name to Jim Kirk. He'd never be Jimmy again. Jimmy had let this happen, made this happen.

Were this is a movie, the sky would have been the color of blood and there would have been a storm. There wasn't. It was a clear day, the sky indigo, the color it always was. The double suns shone in the sky, one blue and one red. 

The light reflected off the blood. Had it not been gruesome, it would have been pretty. The blood stretched for almost as far as he could see. He could imagine the grass was sticky with it. Jim took a step out, and the corpses were suddenly in such sharp focus.

They were all people he had known. His teachers, his aunts, so many people. Jim swallowed down vomit, and he fought to keep his knees from buckling beneath him. It was vile, horrific, abhorrent. He had taken a part in this.

Suddenly he could remember the feel of a gun in his hands. The feel of the trigger beneath his fingers. The sound of screams. There were tall walls around the yard, around that land that was too saturated with blood. His shoes squishing in the blood, ripples spreading out from his every step.

The stench of rotting flesh and wet and drying blood was thick, but Jim didn't vomit. He finally reached the gate and pushed it open. It creaked as he stepped out.

He didn't see the gun before it connected it with the back of his neck and knocked him up.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

The jail was crowded. Hundreds crammed into a room that should’ve held maybe a single hundred tops. The stench was foul. It’d cause anyone to vomit except the people stuck there. Even guards kept out of it for the stench. Vomit. Shit. Piss. Sweat. People. Everything together, mixed. But when the mob came, it wasn’t smoke or noise that started the panic.

Heat.

Blazing.

Everyone started screaming and then suddenly pushing. Falling and falling and squish and splash. Legs. Avoiding the legs. Jim was panicking, but it wasn’t the fire and the mob below that caused the panic, it couldn’t be. The prisoners were people he would have murdered just days — was it days? — ago.

Jim looked around and he found a way out. He didn't think. He went.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

He watched from a hill as the fire engulfed the prison. He felt nothing. He couldn't feel anything because if he let himself feel anything, he'd feel guilt. More of it than he was capable of bearing. He had killed people on orders. He'd helped massacre 4,000 people while in that haze. He'd just let a couple hundred people burn to death and trample each other.

No, Jim Kirk wouldn't feel anymore.

He couldn't.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

There were moments in a person’s life that defined the tone their life would take. Tarsus was like that for Jim. Jim Kirk felt nothing because his subconscious was too afraid of guilt and remorse, and he felt guilt for feeling so little.

The first sounds of gunshots outside the walls echoed. Jim walked to the town. He saw no reason to run there. He had no weapon of his own as he walked in. Like a ghost he ambled down the streets, ducked out of the way when he heard people near him. He climbed up the fire escape of a shop and sat on the rooftop terrace and watched the bloodshed. He was expressionless. He felt nothing as bloodshed engulfed what had remained of the colony.

He tried not to be scared by that.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Aid workers came a few days later. Jim Kirk stared at nothing the entire time. The aid workers didn’t know what to do with him.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim’s mother didn’t know what to do with him. She tried, she kept offering herself up as someone to talk to as if she hadn’t been one of the ones who’d shipped him off there in the first place. Jim didn’t open up to her. He didn’t think he could ever explain to anyone exactly how messed up he was on the inside. He knew what he’d done had been so wrong, that he was complicit in all of Kodos’s crimes.

And he didn’t hate himself for performing the crimes but for the fact he felt nothing over them.

And even that thought was almost too much for him to bear.

Jim didn’t know how to deal with it, and he had no one who could possibly know how to help him.

So his mouth was kept sealed and his stares remained blank as he collapsed in on himself.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

When Jim had picked up the knife, it was because he had silently evaluated all his options and realized this was the least conspicuous. It wasn’t the most fitting. He would’ve rather the knife been a gun or fire or other people’s feet. When Jim had picked up the knife, he had known exactly what he was doing. There was a void in him, gaping and irrepressible. He was an awful person and he was done.

He had gone, his hand trembling slightly, to the kitchen counter of that Iowan farmhouse and curled his fingers around the knife. It had been cold in his hand, and his hand clasped it so hard that his fingers turned white. He stared down at it and tested its weight in his hand. He brought it up to his face before he ran a hand down it. His eyes followed the motion. The blade had been cold, nearly icy against Jim’s own warm skin. He had sucked in a sharp breath, the air almost painful in his lungs. But it was not painful. Jim knew no pain, and he needed to suffer as he finally died. 

Justice was this:

(n) the administering of deserved punishment or reward.

This was what he intended to do. Jim needed to suffer just as everyone else was. He swallowed, and it was with that thought that he had pressed the blade against the gelatinous flesh of his wrists, the blade pressing almost painfully against the skin. He could feel the sharp blade nipping at his skin. It hurt, and mouth open and gaping, Jim stared at it.

He ripped the blade across his flesh almost savagely. Rivulets of blood trickled in streak s down his arm. The cut was deep. Jim wiped the blood off on his shirt and ignored the pain so he might be able to see the cut in more clarity. He looked at it. Blood still oozed out, and the blade skated across his skin perpendicular to the previous cut. This second one stung more, the surface nerves furious with Jim’s actions. He nearly laughed in glee.

His wrist throbbed, stung, and hurt all at once, but Jim revelled in that as he passed the knife to his other hand. Jim looked down at the blood on the floor and gave a half-smirk despite the pain. Jim didn’t slice his other arm. He just lined the blade up with his skin and sliced off a chunk of flesh. Jim bit his lip to keep from screaming, but he was unable to bite back a curse.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim woke up in the hospital. It took a week before the doctors were convinced he could go to his mother’s house. It took less time to convince his mother that he was sorry for what he’d done. Winona Kirk was a fearful woman when it came to people and self-harm and suicide. It was because her younger sister had been self-harming for years before committing suicide. Winona left him alone for zero minutes each day and kept him away from anything sharp, pointy, or otherwise harmful.

Jim hated it. He was stifled.

He needed out.

So he found an out.

Five months after he woke up in the hospital, he left the house for the last time.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

A couple of drinks and orgasms later, Jim realized that for the first time he felt truly numb. Gone. No guilt and no guilt at his own lack of guilt. He grinned for a second before taking another swig of alcohol and forgetting his problems for another night.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim Kirk was twenty-two when he came to his senses for the first time since Tarsus. Pike had forced him into this with that dare. Jim had no self-preservation, and he took dares like he took alcohol and cocaine. A detox later, Jim had a purpose and realized he’d missed some key moments of his own life: his late teenage years, college, teen romance, reaching his various legal ages to do things, and most importantly, his mother’s death from alcohol.

But for the first time he was able to remember, he had purpose. 

He had a way to do better than he had done. He could prove himself. In San Fran, he could be a new man. 

For the first time in ages, Jim Kirk smiled for real. He looked over at his new friend, Bones, and honest-to-God smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave feedback.


	8. Chapter 8

There were many things Kirk could say to Spock’s query.

Spock imagined he could see many of them go through Kirk’s mind. Spock knew intuitively that Kirk had a reason for helping because there was no reason Kirk should just help for the sake of helping. For a second, Spock fancied that he could see understanding flash in Kirk's eyes. Then, that moment was lost as Kirk replied, “No one else will.”

Some part of Spock that not even Spock had known about crumbled. Spock turned away but not quickly enough to see a look of shame on Kirk's face. Spock nodded slowly as if in a daze. He felt, and perhaps that was good. But inside, there were barbs driven into his heart. He just wanted to curl in on himself and never come out.

The one person helping him was doing it because no one else would.

And that drove another point into Spock: he was utterly alone. 

No one else but Jim was really helping him.

Spock knew he should have realized this sooner, but he had not. Somewhere deep behind his inner barriers he had been clutching onto hope that maybe he was not alone. Maybe people understood. Maybe people would help him. He saw now that Kirk was right and that he was alone. Spock was empty as he realized this, the agony subsiding into a bitter sensation with which he had already become intimately familiar.

Spock turned to Kirk and said, “Thank you for clarifying.” There was nothing condescending in Spock's voice as perhaps there usually would have been. Instead, he was actually thankful that Kirk had pointed out Spock's folly.

Spock did not see how Kirk's eyes widened. Spock did not understand or even notice the instant remorse and horror that appeared on Kirk's face. Spock did not even see how Kirk mouthed the profanity, “Shit.”

Spock just looked at Kirk as if he were some amusing specimen to be studied. Perhaps he was, but Spock refused to see beyond the surface. He had no depth anymore, was just a shell. He forgot what it was like to be well and truly alive. He was not dead, but neither was he a living being.

“Spock —” Kirk began, but then he cut himself off. He fiddled with his hands. “Spock, I'm sorry, I — I didn't know —”

Spock had already stopped listening and took a step closer to Kirk and grabbed his wrist. “Cease apologizing.”

Kirk obeyed with some hesitance that Spock only scarcely noticed. He did not pay it much mind. Kirk stared at Spock for a moment longer. Spock did not know what he wanted to do about Kirk. On one hand, a large part of Spock wanted to get away from Kirk and all other people because how could they want to help him, but on the other, he wanted to hide in the arms of the one person he knew wanted to help him. 

Spock blinked, still incapable of coming to a decision.

And then he did decide.

He fled, postponing the day when he would truly have to choose for just a little bit longer.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim knew he was an idiot because how the fuck else could he have said what he had said to Spock?! This was what he had always hated about his mother's help. It was selfish. It was all “don't make me lose you again” and “but what about me, Jimmy?” and it made Jim want to throw something or beat something up. She'd tried to heal him for her sake and not for his own.

Jim bit his lip. He didn't know how he could make what he had said all right again. There were so many quotes about tearing down in seconds what took months to build. Jim didn't know what to do. He didn't know if it were possible to fix what he had just broken.

Jim heaved in a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. How could he have been so stupid? He cursed it, cursed himself. Jim pulled up his sleeves. There were still scars on his wrists. He had never really cared to use the dermal regenerator to fix the scars of his past. He learned to live with them showing. If that meant he spent a lot of times in long sleeves, then so be it.

He hated himself for what he'd said. Regret was futile, but still it was there and still he suffered from it. He had guilt now. He'd gotten better from where he was mostly through his first actual friendship and mandatory psych counciling. But he could feel regret. He learned to live with it too.

He knew how to live with what he'd done. How to compartmentalize. How to focus only on the present. How to live. He saw this as a good thing. He had taken lives and done horrible things to others. He'd a let them burn. Jim questioned why his words to Spock were having such an effect on him. They shouldn't have been, not with everything else he'd gone through. But there it was.

Jim needed a fucking drink.

He didn't go to the observation deck even if that was his favorite place to be. He'd been there earlier, and he suspected people would now know that was a good place to find him. He pulled up a map of the Starbase and scanned it for a good place to sneak away to.

He didn't see one, so he opted to return to his and Bones’s room. He figured out the least populated route and took it quickly. He was lucky to have avoided any actual attention. For once, no one had even asked for his autograph. 

Bones was in the room when Jim arrived, but Bones wasn't alone. There was a Vulcan girl who looked to be about maybe seven. There was a human boy and human girl also. They looked to be twins and maybe around nine. The moment looked private to Jim, the private moments of a family.

Jim pressed the button to shut the door. He took a step backward and came face to face with the old Vulcan who had joined the group around Spock the previous day. According to Sarek, the man was an older version of Spock. Jim didn't know if he could believe that.

“Jim,” Old Spock said. His voice was lower than that of his counterpart. There was a gravity to him, too, that his universe's didn't have. Jim saw sadness, true despair, in those eyes, and peace. Jim found himself instantly jealous of the man. “It is good to see you again though the circumstances are . . . not ideal.”

“Not ideal?” Jim asked. The incredulity flooded his voice. 

Spock quirked an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side. “Indeed. What has happened to my younger self?”

Jim flinched and looked at the metal floor of the space station to avoid looking at Old Spock. How was anyone supposed to tell an old guy he'd fucked up said old guy’s younger self? Jim didn't know what he was supposed to say here, so he tried the first thing he could think of. “Why are you asking me? He doesn't tell me things. We hated each other before everything, you know?”

Old Spock looked unconvinced of that fact, but he seemed to understand what Jim was not saying. It sort of pissed Jim off that he had been unable to bullshit this stranger. “What did you do?”

“I didn't do anything!” Jim lied, glaring at Old Spock.

Old Spock looked at him a moment. “You need to talk to him. He trusts you now, and he is refusing to speak with anyone. He needs help.”

Jim nodded as if he hadn't already known this. “Right, well, I can't fucking do this. You know what, why don't you talk to him, or one of his friends. I can't do anything to help him!” Jim couldn't help, he figured, not when he had so damaged Spock already. If that were Jim's way of helping, he couldn't help any more. He'd mess everything else up too.

Old Spock put a hand on Jim's shoulder. “You are the only one who has a chance.”

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Spock was not sulking — at least that was not the word he would use to describe his current actions. Spock was Vulcans and Vulcans never sulked. But Spock was so inundated with feelings now. The important ones, the feeling borne of his failure to save two entire planets, those were still gone. Instead he had feelings of abandonment and betrayal and a dependence on Jim, all the feelings he had no right to.

Spock restrained a sigh and continued sitting on his bed. He did not have any tasks to do, and there was nothing that particularly interested him, nothing at all. Staring blankly provided very little entertainment. Spock had nothing and no one because nothing and no one but Kirk wanted him. He doubted that even Kirk really wanted him around. 

It came all of a sudden, that sick feeling in his stomach, a deep yearning over which he had no control. He should not have survived when he had cut his wrists. When he had been cutting, the goal had never been suicide. It had been pain, it had been to have some meager substitute for all the pain he should have felt. Now, well, now he stared at those knives again. Should he end it? No one would miss him. He would be setting anyone free of perceived obligations to him.

Slowly, he peeled the bandages from his skin. He held back a wince as the adhesive pulled at the hairs on his arms. The cuts were still angry and green, neither straight lines but shaky and veering this way and that. The flesh around it was tinged green. It was not so much infection as just what typically happened after a wound. 

Spock could not help the way his eyes were attracted to those slices on his wrists. They just were. His jaw was slightly slack as he looked at them. Slowly, he brought his right hand up to trace the wound on his left. It was the neater of the two. Then he switched and traced all the zigzags of the left cut. They were nearly artistic, symmetry but not quite perfect.

Spock stood on shaking legs and shuffled toward the drawer where he kept his scissors. The knives had been confiscated, but the scissors had been there earlier when he had checked. He pulled open the drawer, relishing the sound of the drawer sliding open. Then he looked down at the drawer, and it was empty. Spock turned around while frowning ever-so-slightly and came face-to-face with one James T. Kirk. It was a second later that he realized Kirk was holding the self-same scissors that Spock had been looking for only moments earlier. Spock was not sure how he had missed Kirk entering his quarters.

“I don’t believe in hiding sharp pointy things from people who are cutting mostly because I hate that and trust people to make their own decisions about that shit. But after what I said earlier, I realized there was a particular danger for it. I wanted to apologize before you completely made up your mind.

Spock blinked and tilted his head to the side. “Then I would appreciate it if you spoke quickly.”

“People care about you. I fucked up, but people care about you. There are reasons I said what I did, but what I said? I wasn’t talking about you.”

Spock reached out and grabbed Kirk’s wrist. Instantly a myriad of emotions barraged his consciousness before he quickly erected a barricade against them. “Why?”

“I don’t know how to tell you that, but when I said no one else would help? I wasn’t talking about you. You’ve got your dad, Uhura, Bones, your counterpart. I was talking about . . . .” Kirk grimaced and couldn’t say the final word of the sentence. Instead, Spock felt it through where their skin touched.

_me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is out about a day later than usual because I have been a bit busy for most of the past week. While writing this, it occurred to me that I am about at the end of what I actually have planned. As such, I am going to take a short break from writing this story. During this break, I will be working on _Run So Near_ and figuring out just what the fuck is going to happen for the rest of this fic. I may also get some work on a couple of one-shots done.If it is any consolation, I do have the rest of _Run So Near_ figured out. I am not abandoning this story, so please worry not. Do not expect it to be more than a couple weeks' hiatus. Patientiae vestrae gratias vobis. For your patience I thank you all.
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, you guys! I'm actually updating! Anyway, sincere apologies for the delay. I don't think we should be having another delay of an entire month on this fic. So please enjoy the long, long overdue chapter nine! Trigger warning: Panic attack

Spock tilted his head to the side. _Kirk? What did Kirk have to do with how Spock was now? What did Kirk have to recover from? How was Kirk in his position? One of them had lost two planets. One of them had let everything fall to ruin and had stood by . . ._

_Oh. . . ._

Perhaps not. For a second, all Spock could see was red, the color of human blood spread across some foreign courtyard. It was not an image that Spock could recognize. For a second, Spock wondered then how he could be seeing this image when he had put up a block to keep out Kirk’s thoughts. But when Spock looked down at when his fingers were wrapped around Kirk’s wrist and when his gaze drifted up to Kirk’s face, all he could see was the devastation on the other man’s face. 

_Oh. . . ._

Not even Spock’s shields could stand such strength of emotion. It seemed almost inevitable that he should feel the other man’s emotions. Spock’s eyes met Kirk’s blue, and all he could see was _loneliness_ , so much emotion, but yet not a tear. _Was this him?_ Spock wondered. _Was this what everyone saw in him?_

The loneliness in Kirk’s eyes was Spock. That loneliness, he realize, haunted him too. No one could understand how he felt, how it felt to be so isolated by losing so much, by being the one blamed for all of it. Even Spock’s emotions tried to ignore him as best they could. That was a daunting thought.

Still, the most powerful thought in Spock’s brain when he saw the look in Jim Kirk’s eyes was _yes_.

It was not so much conscious thought as reflex, but Spock felt his hand slide up the fabric of Kirk’s shirt, up the man’s neck, up until it reached his forehead. 

_Oh. . . ._

The urge was not one Spock even consciously noticed, yet it was too strong for Spock to resist. He just saw Kirk’s eyes widen a fraction when suddenly there was no more _Kirk_ and no more _Spock_. It was just _them_ , a single mind made up of two very different, very similar beings.

If Spock would later have to compare it to anything, he’d say it was like falling but then realizing that the danger had never existed. The meld was not comfortable but comforting, not painful but agony still. And 

_Oh. . . ._

Could Spock feel now. It wa all sharp and places, and it felt like entire pieces of him were missing and it was all _how did I not feel this before_ and Spock felt them shrink, himself shrink with the onslaught. Yet there was the that peculiar feeling, such juxtaposition to the very idea of being alone because he was not alone, not even in the most intimate sense.

_Oh. . . ._

He saw Kirk — was it Jim now? — as a younger boy, and he saw the blood and the followed orders, and he saw the aftermath. He saw the blood there, too, red and slipping down the skin of a boy until everything was white and sterile. He could feel the wonder when Jim woke, the _is this heaven why am I here_ , and he could feel the disappointment as he realized where he was, the hatred at his mother.

Jim was foreign. His mind was so completely alien to Spock even while being so totally the same.

Spock could feel himself bleeding into Jim, too. He could feel the small bit go first — the feeling of being so severed from his emotions. The feeling of losing everything. The feeling of being so lost. The feeling of self-blame validated by everyone. The feeling of not being able to care. The feeling of fear. 

But more than anything, he told Jim one thing, one single emotion: _lost_. It was more of an S.O.S., a plea for salvation even than that.

And Spock fell into Jim. He did not noticed Jim’s strong arms enveloped him; all he felt was warmth. He felt belonging. He felt care. And he latched on with the thought _please._ He drifted, the warm feel of Jim wrapped around him his only sense. 

For a moment, he was home.

_And then he began to panic._

Panic was a foreign sensation. Spock did not know that he had ever felt it save once when his mother fell, when he could save no one. But even then, it was panic for a split second only as it quickly gave way to horror.

This was true panic, that feeling of 

_what_

_am_

_I_

_doing_

_what_

_am_

_I_

_doing_

_I_

_can’t_

_be_

_doing_

_this_

_shouldn’t_

_be_

_doing_

_this_

_must_

_stop_

_can’t_

_stop_

_shit_

_shit_

_what_

_do_

_I_

_do_

_can’t_

_do_

_anything_. 

He pulled away in the physical and mental senses both until he was no longer touching Jim. _How could he have done this?_

He took a breath slowly. In and out, in and out, in and out.

His thoughts raced, too quick for him to even register what all of them were.

The one thought he did have was that that was a non-consensual mind-meld that had very nearly turned into a bond.

“Spock?” The name barely registered through the fog in his brain. “Spock?”

Spock could not make his eyes meet Jim’s. Kirk’s. He had not right to call Kirk Jim, not after what he had done. 

“Breath with me. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.” 

Spock could barely register the words enough to obey every other command. It felt as though everything kept coming in and nothing coming out even though he knew it was impossible.

They sat there for a while, and Spock did not know how long it had been:

Hours?

Minutes?  
Days?

Spock’s time sense failed him. It could have been any of those though he knew the two former options were by far more likely than the latter. Eventually, he forced his eyes open with the idle thought, _when did I close my eyes?_

He realized then that Kirk was still sitting beside him and wondered why Kirk hadn’t run. “Hey,” Kirk whispered. “How you feeling?”

A realistic answer would have been something like “I feel like utter shit right now.” Instead, he answered, “I am fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Kirk disagreed. “I think I’d know.” Spock watched as Kirk bit his lip. “Look, if you don’t mind me asking, what happened? Did I do something?”

Spock tilted his head to the side. “What?”

“Because you freaked in the meld, so was it a problem with me? Was it because of what I . . . what I . . . you know?” It was here that Spock realized that Kirk, too, was trembling. And that Kirk had tears in his eyes. Spock blinked.

“You were okay with the meld?” Spock was hesitant to ask, almost too afraid. He did not know how either of Kirk’s answers might feel, if he would be invalidated if the answer that Kirk was okay, and the weight of what he had done might be too much if Kirk were not okay. He swallowed thickly and stared at his hands, which rested in his lap.

“Spock, our minds were literally connected. Did you feel me complaining?” Kirk reached out and guided Spock’s face so that Spock was looking at Kirk. Kirk had an eyebrow raised and a half-smile on his lips. 

Spock thought about Kirk’s question for a second. “No.”

“I was fine.” There was a pause for a second and a chuckle. “More than it, really.”

Spock nodded. “What did you show me?” Spock asked quietly. He did not know how to describe what he had seen in Kirk’s mind. In a way, it was more terrifying than Nero. In a way, it was so much easier to comprehend. In a way, it was harder to stomach. How did he not know what Kirk had gone through as a child? How was it not on StarFleet records?

Kirk’s face shuttered. “Hell. Look— can we not — can we not do _this_ right now? I- I need some . . . time.” Kirk’s hand fell from Spock’s face, and had Spock not been cursed with Vulcan dignity, he might have frowned at that. Kirk scrambled to his feet and fled, leaving Spock staring after him.

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim stared out the window of the room he was sharing with Bones. There was a glass of alcohol in his hand. His thoughts kept circling back to the one thing he didn’t want anything to do with, the one topic that he tried to avoid thinking of at all costs: Kodos. Tarsus IV. Hell. These were all the same to him, and sometimes he wondered that if he died and went to hell, would he see his past? Or would they find something worse for him? He shuddered to think of what that could be.

He drained the rest of his glass. Fuck. Had he ever even moved on from it in truth? Or was he still coping? Was he what Spock was on his way to becoming? The thought nearly made Jim choke. Ordering another glass, Jim shut his eyes. He rubbed his temples and willed it all to go away, for the alcohol to be his painkiller. 

He downed the glass of alcohol the second he got it. 

Let the alcohol be his bandages, too. Keep the blood away. Keep the wound hidden.

More alcohol.

Swallow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, more apologies for the delay once again! Please comment even if it is just to yell at me for the six-month-long wait!
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T'Alaro apologizes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I thought it had only a month left, and then like I ignored the fic for over a year. Hahaha yeah. Anyway, I am going to finish this thing. I promise. Here's another chapter. There's only three left after this, and I will get them done. I would wait to post until the other three chapters are done, but I just want to get this up ASAP.

According to anyone who ever drank, hangovers suck. Jim realized that hangovers were 100% worse when there was a Vulcan staring at him as he tried to work through it. Jim sat up, groaned, and clutched his head. _Fuck, it hurt_. He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink the previous night, and then he decided that he didn’t regret drinking last night at all.

He regretted not having a flask now for the morning.

Still, he forced himself to get off his bed and get a cup of coffee from the replicator. He drank it. He felt a bit better, but he still felt like utter shit. He turned to face the Vulcan. T’Alaro. The former _admiral_ “You’re here in my quarters because why?” Jim asked harshly. He raised an eyebrow.

T’Alaro’s face remained passive. Jim, for a brief moment, was not even sure that she had heard him. Then her jaw twitched, and Jim realized that she almost certainly was weighing her options, choosing whatever she said carefully. Jim knew what she knew: She had everything to gain back and nothing to lose. _And that makes her dangerous_ , Jim thought.

Finally, a blink, too. “What I and my colleagues did was morally reproachable, but it was logical for the preservation of StarFleet. _Spunau bolayalar t'Wehku bolayalar t'Zamu il t'Veh._ The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I regret the damage done to your —” Here T’Alaro paused, and Jim wrinkled his nose in confusion. Then she finally seemed to find the word she wanted. 

“— _t’hy’la._ ”

Jim frowned. It was a word he did not know, and it was a word that Jim was not going to ask the meaning of, not when he knew it referred to Spock. Still, Jim bit his lip before blurting, “No. You’re wrong. Blaming one person isn’t going to get you anywhere. It’s the system that’s the problem, that needs to change — are you so blind as not to see it? If we don’t change it, we let it happen again. And again. And again. We need to move forward. And we need to stick together, all of us, right now. If we don’t, we’re dead. Boom! Kaput! The end!” 

Still, something about those words felt like poison to Jim even as they left his lips. _Hypocrisy,_ a voice in his head told him. He promptly told it to shut up and took a deep breath. His blue eyes bored into T’Alaro’s deep brown eyes.

Jim thought, for a second, that he could see her smiling at him with her eyes.

A second later, nothing.

“I searched the Starfleet Database for information on you. The database lacks most records on your past.” It was just a statement, plain, simple, but yet, Jim could detect the meaning behind it without any problem. _What?_ the question was. _Where were you, and why do we have no record of you?_

“Oh, no,” Jim snapped, “We are not turning this around on me! This is not about me! It’s about the problems that need to be fixed and about making sure your goddamn planet’s sacrifice was not in vain!” He was sitting now, so completely able to ignore the throbbing of his head because all he wanted to do punch her.

“Have you not listened to me?” T’Alaro asked. Her words were clipped as though she were doing her best to mask her own frustration. “I have come here to tell you that I regret what has been done to your _t’hy’la_.” Her deep brown eyes stared unblinkingly at Jim until Jim had to look away.

He forced himself to breathe. “Look here, I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. You should be apologizing to _Spock._ ” His nostrils flared, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. He glanced around the room in an attempt to find something to distract himself with. Nothing caught his eyes well enough, so he instead focused on the fabric of T’Alaro’s robes. It was very Vulcan, certainly not anything Starfleet had given her, but it was worn, worn enough that Jim doubted it could last for much longer. 

“It is customary in my culture that the wrongdoer not impose upon the wronged. Ergo, it would be inappropriate for me to approach your _t’hy’la_ and apologize directly.” Though still unsatisfied, Jim felt his muscles relax ever-so-slightly. “Will you relay the apology?”

Slowly, Jim nodded. He had a sinking feeling that this was the only apology Spock would be getting from any of the admirals. He deserved so much more than some half-assed apology from one person. Jim shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If he does forgive you, will you talk to him? It might do you both good to talk.”

T’Alaro stiffened but otherwise kept an entirely neutral expression. “ _Rai,_ it is not to be. I shall follow the path of Kolinahr and purge my emotions in the way of my people. It is the only way for me to be whole again.” She raised her hand in the ta’al. “ _Dif-tor heh smusma,_ James Tiberius Kirk.”

Jim copied the gesture. “Peace and long life.”

⚔ ⚜ ⚔ ⚜ ⚔

Jim met with Spock later that afternoon when Jim found Spock in the MedBay. Jim nearly laughed — under no ordinary circumstances would he have entered any sort of medical facility of his own volition. Ever since he was a child, he had had a fear of them, and that fear had only been exacerbated when he had been confined to a medical bay after Tarsus IV. Yet here, at the end of all things, it felt almost comfortable. Bones and M’Benga were talking to each other and fussing over Spock, checking to make sure he was recovering well. 

“Kirk?” Spock asked when he finally stopped giving Bones the Vulcan equivalent of the death glare as Bones waved a tricorder around his body. It almost made Jim smile.

“I’m Jim, remember?” 

Spock looked down, and Jim sat down next to him on the hospital bed. “I melded without your consent.”

“I said I forgive you,” Jim protested. “There was nothing wrong. Okay?” He did not wait to see if Spock seemed to take the point or not. Instead, he forged on, “Speaking of apologies, Former Admiral T’Alaro came to visit me this morning. Said she wanted to apologize to you but couldn’t do it in person because of customs or whatever.”

“It is impolite for the trespasser to continue trespassing in the victim’s life,” Spock said, his voice quiet and monotone almost as though he were reciting something from rote. “So she went to you and asked you to relay her message.”

Jim nodded. 

“Did she say anything else?” Spock tilted his head to the side, looking almost feline. 

“She’s going to purge her emotions,” Jim informed him, shrugging. “Personally, I don’t get it. How could she live with herself not feeling guilt about everything, but I guess that’s just a me thing. I probably should have argued her about it, but truthfully, I’m tired. She wants to avoid this? Let her. She’ll regret it someday.” Jim took a ragged breath and ran a hand through his greasy hair. 

Spock nodded thoughtfully. “If she completed Kolinahr, then she will not have to regret it.”

Something else occured to Jim. “Wait, she did say another thing. She called you something. I didn’t know what it met. She called you my _t’hy_ —”

Jim was prevented from finishing his sentence by a rather harried looking yeoman entering the room, panting heavily and her cheeks pink. The yeoman’s arrival also prevented Jim from noticing the way Spock tensed suddenly with his eyes wide. “Captain Kirk! Captain Kirk! Oh and um, you.” 

Jim focused his very best angry glare on her. “‘Oh and um, you’ has a name, you know.” The yeoman stared at him. Spock shook his head, motioning for Jim to stand down. That just made Jim feel angrier that she would treat Spock so dismissively. “His name is Spock. You should try using it. It’s a good name.”

The yeoman blushed. Spock visibly frowned. “Jim, you don’t —”

Jim crossed his arms. “Keep me waiting, and you’ll have to say his Vulcan Clan name too, and I’ve heard that’s a lot less easy for humans, so come on.”

“Captain Kirk,” the yeoman mumbled. “Spock. Captain Pike wishes to see you.”

Jim froze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment. It makes me feel appreciated and helps my fragile self-esteem.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this, and all feedback is sincerely appreciated.
>
>> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


End file.
